Since around the release of the iPhone in 2006 it's been assumed that most pieces of technology people have and interact with will, as part of their day-to-day operation, connect to the internet. Prior to then, if you decided to digitize your contacts list (for example) you'd have carried around a PDA[^1] that had a little database in it that you manually loaded your contacts into. Now, Google is happy to store the information for all your contacts in their servers and send that data to you when you request it. You may not even realize how *little* of the content you access on your phone or computer is **not actually on your device**. [[Local Applications]] have become increasingly rare. This is all well and good, except that it puts us in the state of being [[Permanent Newbies]]. Cloud-based apps and services are constantly changing (and dying). It also makes you **dependent on a connection**. If your internet goes down, or you get on a plane, or if you happen to live in one of the giant swaths of the world where reliable, always-on internet is not really a thing, then **these tools we've all come to rely on suddenly become a lot less useful**. > [!tldr] Your phone can be a pretty good camera without an active network connection, but beyond that it doesn't do a whole bunch. File this note under: "yeah, obviously" - but it was originally a preamble to [[Cool Offline Technology]]. **** # More ## Source - self [^1]: PDA = "Personal Digital Assistant" - for those who are younger than 20. Imagine a phone that has no internet.